METS, the Metadata Encoding and Transmission
Standard, is another standard important to the New Jersey Digital Highway. METS provides a way to
package together all the critical components of a digital object. For example, a simple photograph, when digitized and
stored as a resource in the NJDH, requires the creation of a master or archival file for preservation, several additional
files in various formats for display to the public, a package of metadata, some information about the METS package itself,
and a kind of digital table of contents called a structure map. METS-again, an XML standard--provides a framework to keep
all these parts together within the computer storage system.